A journalist photographs the new LG G2 smart phone in New York August 7, 2013.

Reuters

The idea, playing off a slogan about LG’s phone being “in the Cloud,” was to fill up some helium balloons, with some of them containing a voucher for a free G2 smartphone inside. LG’s Korea marketing team would then launch the balloons and see where they end up, once they lost their helium and drifted back to earth.

Anyone lucky enough to stumble upon a winning voucher could turn it in for a brand new phone. Presumably, this would launch a city-wide scavenger hunt, building hype for the brand.

So far, so good.

Local journalists were duly informed of the scheme, and invited to show up at the launching ground, at a park near Seoul’s main river.